“Deserves it! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
@edgarblythe,
Is that from the conversation between Gandalf and Frodo where Frodo says that he wished Bilbo had killed Gollum?
@edgarblythe,
My son thinks I'm right and that's good enough for me.
@izzythepush,
I started to read that book, but I didn't like certain aspects of his writing and backed off.
@edgarblythe,
I tend to hear snippets of shows on Radio 4 while driving. One was a programme about Tolkein, a couple of points stood out.
He saw active service during WW1, the exchanges between Frodo and Sam as they journey through the marshland towards Mordor are straight out of the Trenches.
He grew up next to a railway line and saw carriages off to exotic locations in different languages, Welsh. The other people's are based on Britons, the English are the Hobbits, the Welsh are the Elves and the Dwarves are the Scots.
@edgarblythe,
edgarblythe wrote:
I started to read that book, but I didn't like certain aspects of his writing and backed off.
Refering to A Fair Wind in Jamaica
@edgarblythe,
I thought you meant Tolkein.
From what I read of the synopsis the Jamaica book sounded pretty imperialist.
I'm reading a book on ancient civilisations written around the turn of the century. (20th) It was written by an American academic but is no less imperialistic for that. It is peppered with language like savages and sounds smug and patronising even when dealing with cave dwelling tribes in Europe during the Stone Age.
“Every empire, however, tells itself and the world that it is unlike all other empires, that its mission is not to plunder and control but to educate and liberate."
(Los Angeles Times, July 20, 2003)”
― Edward W. Said
“To err is human, to purr is feline.”
― Robert Byrne, The 2,548 Best Things Anybody Ever Said
Elmore Leonard on Writing
1. Never open a book with weather:
If it’s only to create atmosphere, and not a character’s reaction to the weather, you don’t want to go on too long. The reader is apt to leaf ahead looking for people.
2. Avoid prologues:
They can be annoying, especially a prologue following an introduction that comes after a foreword.
3. Never use a verb other than “said” to carry dialogue:
The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the verb is the writer sticking his nose in. But said is far less intrusive than grumbled, gasped, cautioned, lied.
4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb “said”:
… he admonished gravely. To use an adverb this way (or almost any way) is a mortal sin. The writer is now exposing himself in earnest, using a word that distracts and can interrupt the rhythm of the exchange.
5. Keep your exclamation points under control:
You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose.
6. Never use the words “suddenly” or “all hell broke loose”:
This rule doesn’t require an explanation. I have noticed that writers who use “suddenly” tend to exercise less control in the application of exclamation points.
7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly:
Once you start spelling words in dialogue phonetically and loading the page with apostrophes, you won’t be able to stop.
8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters:
In Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” what do the “American and the girl with him” look like? “She had taken off her hat and put it on the table.” That’s the only reference to a physical description in the story, and yet we see the couple and know them by their tones of voice, with not one adverb in sight.
9. Don’t go into great detail describing places and things:
You don’t want descriptions that bring the action, the flow of the story, to a standstill.
10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.
My most important rule is one that sums up the 10: If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.
"The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it." - Terry Pratchett
“The sunrise, of course, doesn't care
if we watch it or not.
It will keep on being beautiful
even if no one bothers to look at it.”
― Gene Amole
“The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.”
― Nicolas Chamfort
Men marry women with the hope they will never change. Women marry men with the hope they will change. Invariably they are both disappointed.
-- Albert Einstein
“Sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whisky bottle in the hand of (another)... There are just some kind of men who - who're so busy worrying about the next world they've never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
“When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called a Religion.”
― Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
“From the beginning men used God to justify the unjustifiable.”
― Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses
“I tried to believe that there is a God, who created each of us in His own image and likeness, loves us very much, and keeps a close eye on things. I really tried to believe that, but I gotta tell you, the longer you live, the more you look around, the more you realize, something is fucked up.”
― George Carlin
The journey in search of soul is difficult and even dangerous because it requires that we relinquish the certainty of what we think we know and what we have been taught for generations to believe. It means surrendering the desire to be in control and opening ourselves to a quest, a path of discovery.
--Anne Baring, The Dream of the Cosmos: A Quest for the Soul
Author of, The Myth of the Goddess: Evolution of an Image
